Columnist Chuck Bell heeds Mark Twain's wise words and heads west

I never tire of reading Mark Twain’s stories of his travels west, his stories of everything from mining gold to jumping frog contests and of the wisdom he wove into each account.

This fall, my wife and I cleared our schedules for a couple of weeks and took off for the west. Our major destination was the Grand Teton Mountains near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. My wife calls these majestic mountains God’s gift to America and I have yet to meet anyone who has not been spellbound the first time they saw them. We did spend several days in the mountains and they were just as magnificent as we remembered. But there were also a number of remarkable sights on our journey to and from the mountains that made this a memorable trip.

Once you get west of Kansas City, you will find traffic decreases and wind turbines increase. There is no correlation, just a reason to consult SIRI. We found Kansas gets more than 30% of its electricity from wind turbines which makes sense because it seems like the wind never stops blowing there. Windfarms are common sights through much of the west. A stop near Cozad, Nebraska, taught us crops were thought to be nearly impossible to grow west of here before the Ogollala Aquifer was discovered and harnessed for use in irrigation. Now, there are great crop circles of green in Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado in patterns that would suggest visits from outer space but are rather caused by the huge circular irrigation systems providing water where there is very little moisture from the sky.

Traveling south from the Tetons, we made a return trip to Mesa Verde National Park, commonly known as the Cliff Dwellings. Mesa Verde, in southern Colorado, was inhabited from about 450 to 1300 by people fairly advanced in agriculture and conservation. On top of the mesas, they built dams to hold what water was available and then used these reservoirs with ditches leading out of them to provide water to their crops. There was natural cooling from the summer heat under the cliffs as well as protection from winter storms. The Mesa Verde area was abandoned about 1300 for reasons unknown though years of drought are suspected. Our favorite new park find was Capitol Reef National Park in Utah with its beautiful red rock formations and white domes suggestive of those on capitol buildings.

Secondary roads we traveled were extremely well maintained and allowed us to see the real countryside, farms, ranches and small towns. This travel taught us an important lesson. When you are traveling in the west and you are looking for a place to eat breakfast, check out the restaurant with the pickup trucks. That is usually where the best food and largest portions will be found along with the friendliest people. Later, the pickups will be replaced by the sedans and vans of tourists and business will proceed as usual. A great lesson learned in Alpine, Wyoming. Try to find that one on the map.

We learned some other valuable lessons along the way. Courage came as we drove Colorado’s most dangerous road, an uphill lane and a half passage from Durango to Silverton, Ouray and Telluride. My wife’s nail prints are still in the rubber trim around the window. We learned to keep quiet as we were telling a motel hostess about our Ohio dairies. She had just left a job as part of a 2,000 cow milk crew on a local farm. We learned perseverance as we managed to locate the Virginia Dale (Colorado) post office from Louis L’amour’s books. And, we learned good sports politics in a St. Charles, Missouri, bakery called Grandma’s when, dressed in our scarlet and gray OSU clothes, we discovered the bakery was owned by a Notre Dame football player’s mother. This was on Thursday after the OSU vs. Notre Dame game, which hadn’t gone well for them. We still bought a couple dozen cookies from a cousin.

If you ever get the opportunity, take a trip west, get to know the places and people, make memories to last a lifetime. The real story of America isn’t found on the interstate. Take a secondary road for a while and see what you can find.

Chuck Bell is a former 4-H Educator for Muskingum County.

This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Columnist Chuck Bell heeds Mark Twain's advice and heads west